Foundry is a premium business intelligence publication featuring 551 articles from the best founders and investors. Topics cover leadership, strategy, fundraising, growth, AI, and more.

What topics does Foundry cover?

Foundry covers leadership, investing, AI and technology, product development, founder stories, mindset and career, marketing, hiring, fundraising, strategy, and more. Articles feature insights from founders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang.

Can I submit a story to Foundry?

Yes. You can submit a story at thefoundrybrief.com/submit. Foundry publishes articles featuring insights from founders and investors across all industries.

Palmer Luckey Used Science Fiction to Design Anduril's Entire Product Strategy

By Palmer Luckey · Strategy · 1 min read

If you were writing a hard science fiction novel about a defense contractor that dominates 50 years from today — what technologies would it have had to start building today? That's how Anduril decided what to build.

Key Points

Oculus started with a product. Anduril started with an idea — what would the next Lockheed Martin look like?
They used a sci-fi framework: what defense prime dominates in 2050? What must they start building today?
First product: Lattice, an AI sensor fusion platform. Everything else was built on top of it.

If one were to write a hard science fiction novel about a defense contractor that dominates 50 years from today — what technologies would it have had to start building today?

Oculus Started With a Product. Anduril Started With an Idea.

Luckey: When we started Anduril, it was very different than Oculus. Oculus — I had a product I wanted to make and the company was built around that. With Anduril, we built the company around an idea. What would a next-generation Lockheed Martin look like? If you were to build the next major defense prime today, what would it build? It's probably not manned fighter jets.

Oculus started with a product. Anduril started with an idea — what would the next Lockheed Martin look like?

The Science Fiction Framework

Luckey: I framed it from a science fiction perspective. If one were to write a hard science fiction novel examining a defense contractor that dominates the industry 50 years from today — what technologies would it have had to start working on today to get there?

I read a lot of hard science fiction. You start to realize that a lot of sci-fi ideas — it's not because they're fun. It's because they make sense. Autonomous systems. Mass-manufactured robotic systems across air, land, sea, and space. AI fusing data from all systems into a comprehensive real-time view.

Sci-fi ideas aren't just fun — they make sense. Autonomous systems, AI, robotics across air, land, sea, space.

Lattice First, Hardware on Top

Luckey: We started not knowing exactly what the products would be. We sat down and said — what do we need to start building? Our first core product was Lattice — our AI sensor fusion platform that connects all our hardware products and third-party products too.

Then we built hardware on top: autonomous surveillance towers, counter-UAS towers that detect, jam, and destroy enemy aircraft, undersea vehicles, space sensing platforms, aerial vehicles. Every product is built on top of that same software platform.

It was very much — what are the things we need to build today if we're going to be the Lockheed Martin of the 2050s?

Every product is built on Lattice. What do we need to build today to be the Lockheed Martin of the 2050s?